So I’ve been away for a bit. In the mean time I had a cold, a truly rare thing for me, I studied and did some testing for a part-time, work from home job, I’m still waiting to hear back from them, and I’ve been working on a couple paintings. Also, I’ve been listening to Cory Huff at The Abundant Artist, for tips and tricks to get better at selling my art work. I’m looking at upgrading my equipment for taking pictures of my art and getting better at taking those pictures. I’ve learned a bit and found some other places that I can sell on if I can get some better pics. So, I’m still out here, still working hard and still looking forward to the success I honestly believe is on its way.

So Lady bought me tickets to the Gary Clark Jr. and Kings of Leon concert for last night and it was a great time. I’ve been a bit out of touch with pop culture recently so Gary Clark Jr. was a surprise hit for me. I wasn’t able to get any good pics of him sadly, but he’s got some serious guitar and crowd skills.

The visuals and lighting effect by Kings of Leon were superb

Mechanical Bull Tour

A truly fantastical scene of glittering dust in the laser and normal lights.

In work news

On another note I have applied to a work from home, part-time job and got through the first gate. I’ll up date more as I know more, but this could significantly help me keep doing what I love and not feel so stressed about the cash flow. I’m actually pretty excited about it.

May the heart of what matters be ever evident and the shadows of doubt be held at by by the trust you have in yourself.

Just a quick note to let everybody know I’m still out here and busy. I’ve been working on a number of paintings and I hope to have them all completed next week. Two of them will be Columbus skylines one will be another Pittsburgh skyline and the 4th is an abstract that started with a new medium that I was trying that, while not working as I had thought it would initially, created a very interesting effect that inspired me to create another abstract piece. I also am in the final post production of my second meditation and may have that completed tomorrow.

This Thanksgiving I am happy to have this new vehicle for giving thanks. Thankfulness has become one of the major components of my spiritual life. It is a direct result of not only working with The Secret (and associated works), but with my personal experiences in its ability to shift my perceptions in an energizing and positive way. I have found that my joy is related to my choice to see that life is beautiful and be grateful for that beauty as deeply and as often as I can. When I keep how wonderful just being alive is in my heart and mind, the joys of life seem brighter and the dark clouds move more swiftly. I hope this day finds you remembering all of the things that make you smile and keeping them bright in your mind and held safely in your heart.

So this morning I had a lucid dream for the first time in a long time. I woke up early and had trouble getting back to sleep so I went downstairs to my recliner, brought my iPhone with me and used a fall to sleep episode from The Meditation Podcast to go back to sleep. I eventually fell asleep, somehow got the ear phones out and I go into a wild ride of a dream. I realize I’m dreaming in a place which to me is my living room, but as is the way with dreams looks nothing like my living room. I look out the window and I take off flying. I live in Ohio, but I’m up above mountains flying over them in between the peaks. Its amazing! I start to see a brightness in my peripheral vision and I think that I remember a buddy of mine, who used to lucid dream all the time, tell me that if you turn away from that brightness you can keep the dream from ending. Works like a charm. I just keep turning from the light and keep flying around the mountains for what feels like many minutes. Then I realize I’m back in my chair and my roommate comes down the stairs and I start telling him about the dream I just had. Then I wake up again and he comes down the stairs again and I ask him, “Did I already tell you about my dream?” He doesn’t say anything he just walks outside to have a smoke and I think, “Am I still dreaming?” and I say to my self, “I am dreaming.” So I float out the to the front porch going through the wall, but I make my head go out through the window because I feel like if my head goes through the wall I’ll wake up. I’m not as lucid as I was earlier because I start telling my roommate that I’m dreaming and go on to prove it to him by explaining what I see. Things such as telling him, “See your head just disappeared and your coat is on backwards, that’s how I know I’m dreaming” At that point after trying to convince the dream version of my roommate (the real version of which had left for work hours before hand) I really do wake up. It was an interesting way to start the day. I moved on to some social media time and painting. Getting close to time for the weekend. I hope this finds you knowing that you are experiencing what you need. ~B~

So I spent most of my work day listening to and taking notes on Cliff Ravenscraft’s Social Media 101 tutorial (it’s a pay to view so the link just goes to his products page). I was expecting some sort of giant overview of available social media and a strategy to deal with it all, but instead I got a lot of insight into what he does in a day. What his life as a web personality and as the host of an online community is like. He refers to his home page as his living room and I can see why. I’m still mulling over how this has changed my perception of where I’m going, but happily it feels right. I always liked having people over to my house and being the host. Doing that online seems like a natural progression for me and in many ways it goes back to the me that I lost a bit of while I worked in security. I want to be welcoming and a good host and that always conflicted with my duties at Ohio Dominican and in many ways has not been a real part of my life for a long time. So here’s to recreating the days when my friend’s called my home Elrond’s House, “The last homely house east of the Sea.”

So I’ve spent my work time learning more about audio editing with Audacity and relearning how to use my Yamaha keyboard. I have a 5 track audio cut that is going to be the basis for my 1st podcast and I hope to share it by Monday. As I was getting my self in the right place to do the vocals for the meditation I came across this on Brainy Quote:

I often have found it amazing that others see exactly the same event in the same moment in time that I do, but we take away from that completely different things. At times I have been frozen in my life by knowing that fact. I believed that I could trust others vision more than my own and therefore I believed that I needed to be able to understand how they saw the world before offering my opinions. I’m undoing that a piece at a time these days. Learning to respect the fact that what I see is more important to my path than what others see, but at the same time not discounting their vision. It is a beautiful challenge for me.

So I’m quite pleased with the level of quality I’ve been able to achieve with the equipment that I now have. As seems to keep happening things take longer than you’d imagine, but it’s nice when it is fun to do and feels good when you have achieved that goal.

So here is a better clip, let me know if you have any troubles hearing it or you have any other issues with the sound. I’m happy to learn that its wrong so I know that I can learn to do it better.

So I downloaded Audacity, a free program to record my voice. I hooked up the mixer and the microphone, I finished the initial training at Podcastanwserman.com and I have recorded an audio clip that is attached below. Turns out the microphone I have is a condenser mic that, while awesome, is meant for professional level studios and records to much background noise for my purposes. So with the magic of amazon on my side I’ve ordered another mic and a digital recorder that will be here Thursday. In the meantime I am going to work on finishing up a painting and selecting a few to take pictures of hopefully later today or tomorrow. Now lets see if I can get this audio clip attached…

So it turns out that Propaganda no longer exists as a product. The company that made it has another product that replaced it, but I’m back to the drawing board on that piece. I’m watching an intro video to podcasting from The Podcast Answerman. I’m taking notes and have learned quite a bit so far today. To show how far I’m going to have to come in this venture I really never had a grasp of what an RSS feed was until now and I’m excited to use that knowledge to aggregate my information streams from the web. Back to the learning…